We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heidi Swarthout a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Heidi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I’m in the middle of a most meaningful project right now, actually! I’m currently in rehearsals for Janus Theatre Company’s production of The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson. I’m also co-producing the play, alongside the director, my friend and – he will hate this word – mentor, Sean Hargadon. This play is especially meaningful to me for several reasons. Back in 2017, I did a one-night-only staged reading of Lauren Gunderson’s one-woman play, Natural Shocks, directed by Sean, in what would be my first of many times working with him. I was so moved by Gunderson’s writing that I started devouring any of her work I could read or see. I followed her on social media, and in 2018, she held a contest on Instagram in which she asked her followers to answer a question: Why is Theatre important to you? The winning answer would score a signed copy of one of her scripts. She received hundreds of answers, mine among them. We all carried on about how theatre was not only our creative outlet, but also our church, our therapy, our community, our greatest love, and so on. Her generous heart was so moved by the answers, she decided to send us all autographed scripts. A couple weeks later, I opened my mailbox to find The Revolutionists, with a hot pink cover, and a Sharpie message scrawled inside, “Thank you for believing in theatre! Lauren Gunderson.” A few days later, my Mom was having one of several surgeries she would need that year. I sat in the hospital waiting room, my stomach in knots, my only comfort a hot pink script. I read it in a flash, and knew immediately that I had to do this smart, funny, stirring, feminist, stunning play, somehow, some way. I even knew who should be in it with me, I could see it all so clearly. I was just an actor, I had no special connections or anything, but I started asking around, and even held a reading in a friend’s basement, just to hear the words aloud. I had a couple of directors commit, only to pull out for reasons like scheduling and health. In a full circle moment, Sean offered to direct, and suggested that since I was so passionate about it, that should I co-produce, a huge honor which absolutely floored me. The production was ready to roll…in May of 2020. Obviously, the global pandemic had other plans. The play was shelved. Then it looked like it might return Fall of 2023 – yay! – only to be shelved again due to scheduling issues. But it’s real this time. We open this October, and I cannot fully express what it feels like to actually be moving forward after all this time. I wonder if the universe held it back from us until now for a reason; it’s kind of perfect that we are performing it in a historic election year. It will be my fourth time performing in a Lauren Gunderson play (Silent Sky and The Half-Life of Marie Curie were the others), and my first time in a producer role. The Revolutionists is my dream show, THE dreamiest cast and crew, and it’s with Janus, which has become a dreamboat of an artistic home for me. In my personal life, my Mom is battling more serious health issues now, so once again, this play is a source of strength and comfort.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a non-musical stage actor, having worked with many theatre companies, primarily in and around the Western suburbs of Chicago. With a career background in inside sales, marketing, and customer service, I am also passionate about helping audiences find great theatre, and I assist two theatre companies with their marketing and social media (Janus Theatre Company and iambe theatre ensemble). I have also directed, taught children’s acting classes, co-hosted and written for a podcast about theatre, and helped write original material for my former comedy troupe which toured various Fringe festivals and other unique performance venues (more on that later). At this point, I can say with confidence that I am a competent, active, fulfilled theatre artist. But we all have an origin story, right?

When I was little, and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d always say I wanted to own a zoo or be a movie star. I still love animals, and though I no longer need to be any kind of “star,” let alone the movie kind (I know almost nothing about film acting), many of my dreams have come true on the stage. Unlike my athletic, decade-older siblings, I was a curious, artsy kid who loved to read, write, and draw. And I had an odd game I loved to play: acting out my imaginary friends. I would become Betty Lou, the cowgirl, or Gloria, the socialite who insisted on drinking her Kool-Aid from a wine glass. There were about a dozen or so recurring characters with full backstories and personality quirks, all of whom were, thankfully, cleared by my pediatrician as part of a normal, healthy imagination. There were not many opportunities in the small, rural Ohio town where I grew up, but theatre and I always seemed to find each other, be it a church play, class skit, local children’s fashion show, etc. Theatre combined everything I loved: creativity, reading, analysis, character development, communication, connecting with others, problem solving, questioning ourselves and the world around us. At fifteen, I went along as moral support to a friend’s big audition for young people’s theatre ages 12-21, an hour away, in the “big city” of Cincinnati. The brusque British woman in the lobby insisted I would not be allowed to take up space in her waiting room, so audition or get out! A naive hayseed, terrified of hanging out alone in a parking lot for who knows how long, I reluctantly auditioned, completely unprepared. A huge Elvis fan, I sang Jailhouse Rock, complete with lip twitch. I stumbled through the dance audition. I read…ok, probably. To my amazement, I was cast (my friend was not – awkward). I played a couple of small roles in the musical, Big River, alongside kids who had resumes, training, and experience I could only dream of. I learned so much that summer. Around the same time, my Mom and I worked with other likeminded kids and parents to reopen my high school theatre department, which had been shut down for almost twenty years. Legend has it, it was closed because our largely conservative community disapproved of the last play, which featured a wizard, and a young woman wearing a night gown. The stage had been used to store sports equipment, and the dressing rooms held detention and summer school. A massive effort, complete with several window washing fundraisers and bake sales, we managed to get a drama club up and running. We did a few (probably terrible) plays before I graduated, and I am still proud to know that I was part of creating a space for the artsy kids. After high school, when I chose to study at Marietta College in Ohio, I originally declared a non-theatre major (English), but I kept sneaking in theatre classes, Set Design here, Costuming there, ooh, a whole class on Irish plays sounds neat! That sort of thing. I waited an entire year before I auditioned for anything, and I remember someone on the audition panel asking, after I read, “Where have you been?? Didn’t you work crew pushing platforms onstage for us last year?” Yep, that was me. At the start of what was supposed to be my final year of college, my advisor called me in for a meeting. “You realize you accidentally have a Theatre minor, right? If you stay another year, you’ll have a double major.” And so I did what I should have done from the start, I answered the call inside myself, and spent one very intense, immersive year dedicating myself to a theatre discipline. Directing, Shakespeare, Voice and Articulation, so many classes. I needed a campus job, to go along with my off campus job, but I rarely left the fine arts building. So, I babysat a professor’s child, and posed for a Life Drawing class, in between my classes. I might as well have slept in the Hermann Fine Arts Center that year. An extra year of college was expensive, but it was also invaluable. Before I graduated, Dr. Steve Rader, my brilliant and somewhat eccentric professor, forever in my mind screaming “TONE CHANGE!” when I work on monologues, handed me a copy of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He said, “You should read this. There is something in it for you now. And something for later. You can do this for a long time, you know?” Thinking beyond the ingenue had not even occurred to twenty-one year old me until I read that script. It was a revelation – I can do this thing I love for a long time! Several years later, I played Honey in Woolf. In a few more years, I’ll be Martha-ready, if the opportunity arises. It’s still thrilling to think about that.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I know this may be somewhat controversial, but…I believe if you choose acting for fame or riches, you may have made a wrong turn somewhere. Much respect to those fortunate few who are able to pay their bills, live comfortably, win awards on big televised stages, get asked for autographs, and to those who are hustling and striving to be in that position. But it’s simply not what drives me. If I am doing work that I love, that I am proud to attach my name to, with people who teach me things and fill my heart, and if I can move even one audience member to feel something, and to consider another human’s situation with greater empathy, then I have made it. I feel that way now, and it is really lovely.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

From 2011 to 2016, I was in a sketch comedy troupe, Troupe Strozzi. It was comprised of old and new friends, loosely based on commedia dell’arte. We had stock characters, bawdy songs, oodles of silly props, including a real life slapstick, the kind of performance you might expect to see walking around a Renaissance festival. We wrote all of our own material, and it was…pretty out there. Example, a sketch based on The Nativity, with lines like Joseph saying to Mary, “Really? That’s your answer? GOD knocked you up?” Really high brow stuff. Ha! As our founder, John Dryden, liked to say, we “made hamburger meat out of the sacred cow.” People loved it (or hated it), and we amassed a following after a while. Occasionally, we would perform in a real life theatre space with a stage and chairs, even a few Fringe festivals, and we would, you know, sell tickets to audiences. Most of the time, however, we performed in bars, beer gardens, street corners, parks, coffee shops and other non-traditional spaces, true guerrilla theatre. Let me tell you…There is nothing quite like fighting for an audience’s attention when they did not sign up to watch your show, and they are more interested in taking shots and selfies at a twenty-first birthday party. Sometimes, we were outright ignored. But we did not stop. Ever. We were scrappy. Or crazy. The show went on, regardless of any validation we did or did not get from our audiences. As time went on, we fought harder, we got better, and we learned how to win audiences over. There is also nothing quite like earning the attention of a twenty-first birthday party and seducing them to put down their phones long enough to sing along with you about the pox. The entire Troupe Strozzi experience was incredibly experimental. It changed me as a performer, made me somewhat fearless. It also taught me resilience in the face of change. When you are part of a troupe, it’s like a little family. Actors would come and go over the years, people moved, had babies, needed to focus on other things. The first couple of times we had troupe members exit, I would cry and cry; it hurt so much to think that special chapter, with those wonderful people, was over. But we carried on, new people joined us, new magic was made, new experiments created. I learned that change is the one true constant in this type of work (and life in general!), and that not all change is a bad thing. When it was time for Troupe Strozzi to pack up our wigs and plastic fish after five years, my heart was prepared, and I was ready to move on, grateful for the experience, even the challenging bits. To this day, I am not afraid of “failure” as a performer. I have decided that “perfect” doesn’t exist anyway, and it is impossible to please every person I put my work in front of. And people, the wonderful ones and the dreadful ones, will come and go. Hopefully, the wonderful ones will stick around a bit longer. So, I’ll just keep going, experimenting, finding (or making) new opportunities to do this thing I love. Eventually, Time will usher me, and all of us, to The Exit. But until that day, the show must go on.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @heidithegem
• Facebook: Heidi Swarthout

Image Credits

3 headshots: Lisa Dawn for Emergence See Photography

purple outfit: Sarah Fletcher for Troupe Strozzi

blue light pics: Sarah Knauf for Riverfront Playhouse

Reading book on stool: Lance Lagoni for Steel Beam Theatre

pink/white 50s dress: Tim Curtis for Elgin Theatre Company

Angry brown sweater: Riverfront Playhouse

Pink top, swooning next to maid: Sarah Knauf for Riverfront Playhouse

Mad King outdoors: YWCA Elgin Take 2 for Janus Theatre Company

Red dress and microphone: Sarah Knauf for Riverfront Playhouse

Sad gray sweater with out of focus man: Bennorth Images for Gallery Theatre

Red hair wig: Ken Beach for Wheaton Drama